


Be careful making wishes in the dark (can't be sure when they've hit their mark)

by earlgreytea68



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Birthday, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 03:30:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19098865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: Happy birthday, Pete Wentz.





	Be careful making wishes in the dark (can't be sure when they've hit their mark)

**Author's Note:**

> So, I went to this concert a few days ago, and [this happened](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHAqkoUEPu4). 
> 
> And then this fic happened. 
> 
> Thanks to Aja for looking it over and telling me, "The whole point of you is this kind of fic where everyone's nice and happy" lol

It’s a fucking _thing_ , the singing of “Happy Birthday.”

It shouldn’t be. It’s stupid. It’s a stupid song. Like, it’s not even a _good_ song. Every day billions of people all over the world sing “Happy Birthday” and do a terrible job with it. There is literally no reason why Pete should be looking at him expectantly over a lighter stuck into a Twinkie.

“So?” Pete says, lifting his eyebrows.

“So what?” Patrick rejoins. He’s not a member of this band for his witty repartee, he thinks often.

“So it’s my birthday,” says Pete.

“Yes,” Patrick agrees. “You’ve been making a big deal about it. We fucking sacrificed some pizza money to buy you a Twinkie.”

“Also,” says Joe, where he’s leaning over to keep relighting the lighter, “this is kind of an uncomfortable position, if anyone’s worrying about me.”

“Blow out your candle,” Patrick says, and waits for Pete to complain that it’s not a real candle.

“It’s not a real candle,” says Pete.

“I swear to fucking God,” says Patrick.

“Anyway, you have to make a wish before you blow out the candle,” continues Pete.

“He’s right,” says Andy.

“That’s not helpful,” Patrick tells Andy. “Don’t encourage him.”

“No, he is right,” Joe agrees, and Patrick hates everybody in this band. “Hurry up and make a wish, Pete.”

“Yeah, no, I can’t make a wish until after you sing ‘Happy Birthday.’”

“Happy birthday to you,” Joe starts singing hurriedly.

“No, no.” Pete shakes his head furiously. “ _Patrick_ has to lead us.”

“What?” says Patrick blankly. “Why?”

Pete gives him a look. “You’re the singer.”

“I’m not the singer,” Patrick protests.

“Guys,” Pete says.

“You’re totally the singer,” says Andy, while Joe says, “Yeah, you’re the singer.”

“No, I mean, like, I’m not the singer for ‘Happy Birthday,’” says Patrick. “I’m the singer for Fall Out Boy.”

“Oh, wow,” says Pete, “look who happens to be in this room—”

“It’s a van,” Patrick corrects him.

“Fall Out Boy,” Pete finishes. “It’s Fall Out Boy. _We’re_ Fall Out Boy. You’re our singer.”

“Can you just sing the song for him?” Joe demands in exasperation.

The Twinkie balances on the console between Joe and Pete in the front seat and Pete gives Patrick his fucking big brown puppy-dog eyes and Patrick frowns at him.

“It’s my _birthday_ ,” says Pete.

“You’re, like, a fucking five-year-old,” Patrick grumbles.

“Not the age I am turning today,” Pete tells him solemnly.

“Happy birthday to you,” Patrick sings to him, and he tries to make it the worst song he’s ever sung.

But at the end of it Pete’s smile curls at him, wicked and smug, and Patrick wants to bite it off his stupid face. Pete holds Patrick’s gaze as he leans toward the lighter, and then he dramatically closes his eyes and blows it out. Patrick is still staring at him, mouth dry, when he blinks his eyes open. He smiles at him again. Pete once slid him lyrics that read _My songs know what you do in the dark_ , and Patrick always reads them as Pete murmuring in his ear, _I know exactly who you think about in the dark_ , and it always makes him suppress a shiver and a blush.

“I hope everything you wish for will never come true,” Patrick mumbles at him.

Pete throws back his head and laughs like Patrick is hilarious. “But you don’t know what I wished for! It might have been something good for you, Tricky!”

It probably _was_ about him, because Pete seems _always_ to be thinking about Patrick, and Patrick would find that more flattering if it didn’t freak him the fuck out, the overwhelming energy of Pete Wentz laser-focused on Patrick Stump, Patrick has no idea what to do with it.

Patrick huffs and pretends he’s over the whole thing.

Not too much over it to refuse the slice of Twinkie offered to him.

***

Andy is driving through the night because they don’t have time to stop and he drew this shift. Joe is supposed to be keeping him company to keep him awake but Joe is snoring up against the window.

Pete is slumped against Patrick’s shoulder pretending to be asleep. Pete thinks that Patrick is too kind a soul to shove him off if he thinks he’s sleeping. Pete apparently also thinks that Patrick is a fucking imbecile who can’t tell when the person next to him isn’t asleep. Pete drools when he’s truly asleep, and never drools when he’s feigning sleep; it’s a dead giveaway and a tell Patrick holds close to his vest. Not least because then he’d have to admit that he lets Pete drool on him when he’s really sleeping on him.

Patrick spends six miles getting his courage up. He counts the mile-markers as they go by, so he knows it’s six miles. Then he lifts his shoulder a bit and hisses, “Hey, idiot.”

“Yes, darling?” Pete responds readily, not lifting his head.

“I’ve got a…thing for you,” Patrick murmurs. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t want Andy to hear any of this if he can help it, he just… _doesn’t_.

“Oooh, a _thing_?” purrs Pete. “This is promising. Is the thing in your pants?”

Patrick blushes but at least it’s dark in the van. “No, asshole. Hang on. Get up.” Patrick struggles forward, and Pete sits up. His curiosity is palpable. Patrick can feel his eyes watching him as he pulls over his battered backpack and then takes a Borders bag out of it and hands it to Pete. “I couldn’t, like… I didn’t have time to wrap it for you. Or whatever.”

Pete doesn’t even look at the bag in his hands. He stares at Patrick, his eyes catching the headlights of the cars passing them in the night. He whispers, “Is this a birthday gift?”

“No,” Patrick says, his instinct to deny any sign of affection stupidly strong. And then he has to correct himself. “I mean, yes. Of course. Like. It’s your birthday. We did the Twinkie thing, remember?”

“You didn’t have to buy me anything,” breathes Pete.

“Yeah, I did,” says Patrick. “You bought me that hat for my birthday.”

“I bought it at a truck stop as a joke. You went to a _bookstore_ ,” says Pete.

“It’s not a big deal,” Patrick mutters, embarrassed. “Would you just open it?”

Pete watches him for another long moment.

Patrick says loudly, “I’m going to actually punch you if you don’t open the gift already.”

“You two okay back there?” Andy calls back mildly.

“We’re so good,” Pete answers, and drops his eyes finally to pull the book out of the bag. And then he keeps his gaze down, just looking at it.

Patrick really, really hates the silence. He babbles to fill it. “It’s called _House of Leaves_. Well, I mean. You can see that’s what it’s called. I just… At the bookstore, they said you’d probably like it. I told them that you like all of this pretentious shit, and when they showed me that book I thought that you’d probably like it. So. And it’s not very old, so I’m hoping you haven’t read it. Have you read it?” Pete doesn’t say anything. “Pete.”

“I haven’t read it,” Pete says in a low voice, turning the book over and over in his hands. “Patrick, this is…” He looks up at Patrick. “Thank you.”

Patrick swallows thickly, can’t look away. “Happy birthday,” he manages to say.

Pete smiles at him, that _stupid fucking smile_. “And here I thought you singing to me was going to be my birthday present.”

“I sing to you all the time,” Patrick says, like an idiot.

“Yeah, you do.” Pete’s smile gets wider and sharper and so much more lethal and Patrick wants to bite it. Not bite it _off_ , just bite it. Taste it between his teeth, slide it along his tongue. Somehow, he thinks, Pete is closer than he was. Patrick is pressed up against the door. He’s conscious of the speed with which they are moving, with how they are hurtling through darkness toward a destination they have only the vaguest idea of, and Pete is _right fucking there_.

Patrick’s eyes flutter closed. He has one hand wrapped around the handle of the door behind him, and the other is closed into Pete’s t-shirt, and he genuinely doesn’t know when that happened. “What was your birthday wish?” he asks, strangled. He doesn’t know why he thinks he should be asking a question. Maybe in case Pete’s eyes _aren’t_ fluttering closed and he’s wondering why the fuck Patrick’s hand is fisted into his shirt and this way Patrick can ask a question like they can just go back to some kind of normal conversation.

“If I tell you, it won’t come true,” Pete whispers. He isn’t kissing Patrick but he is literally fucking breathing into Patrick’s parted, waiting mouth. Patrick’s hands convulse, both of them, the one in Pete’s shirt twitching him just that much closer. “And I really fucking want it to come true.” He kisses him then finally, finally, kisses him like Patrick’s spent the last _two fucking years_ pressed against the door of a speeding vehicle by Pete Wentz, which he fucking _has_ , and so Patrick can’t help that he kisses back the same way, kisses him with no idea where they’re going, just that they’re getting there fast.

***

On Pete’s birthday, there is a magnificent cake in the shape of Hemingway.

“Isn’t it weird to eat your dog?” Joe asks dubiously, frowning into Hemingway’s cake face.

“Shh,” Pete says, “Patrick commissioned this just for me.”

“Patrick thinks you want to eat your dog?” says Joe.

“Patrick is, like, right here,” says Patrick, all huffing exasperation behind them.

Pete smiles at the Hemingway cake and tips his head back in Patrick’s direction. “Hello, sweet cheeks, I was just telling Joe how much I love the cake.”

“You left the cake up to me,” Patrick says in annoyance, “and I couldn’t think of anything you love more than you love Hemingway.”

“Patrick, seriously, I love the cake, babe. Joe’s being a tool.”

“Was your first idea for the cake a likeness of you?” Joe asks Patrick frankly.

Pete’s lips twitch.

“Yeah, I totally thought it would be a good idea to call up a bakery and say, ‘Hey, can you make me a cake that looks exactly like me?,’ that wouldn’t have shown up on TMZ _at all_ ,” says Patrick, deadpan.

“I’m just saying,” Joe shrugs, “if your criteria for the cake was ‘things Pete loves a lot.’”

“He’s saying a nice thing, Patrick,” says Pete. “It’s a nice, compliment-y thing. And, for what it’s worth, I would have loved a cake in the shape of you.”

Patrick pauses, then admits, “I thought of it, but you would have done filthy things to it and I didn’t want that happening in front of our friends and family.”

Pete is utterly delighted. “See, this is why I love you most.”

“I’m going somewhere else now,” says Joe, making a face, and leaves.

“Hey.” Pete sidles up closer to Patrick. “Do you have a secret cake of you in our bedroom for later?”

Patrick considers, studying him. “Do you want me to?”

Pete laughs.

“I mean,” Patrick continues, “I had no fucking idea what to get you, so if you want a cake that looks like me, I can make that happen.”

“Patrick, please stop talking dirty to me, I’m wearing very tight jeans and we’re having a birthday party.”

Patrick rolls his eyes. “Let me light the candles,” he says.

“Yeah, that’s going to take ten years, there are a million fucking candles on that cake.”

“That’s just how ancient you are,” Patrick tells him as he strikes a match.

“You’re a brat,” says Pete.

“A _young_ brat,” says Patrick mildly, going from candle to candle calmly.

“There’s no rule you have to put all the candles in, you know. We could have just had, like, one,” Pete points out.

“We also could have had a Twinkie,” Patrick replies, shaking the match out as the flame reaches his fingers and picking up one of the candles to light with instead. “But you left me in charge of the whole thing. ‘Hey, Trick, it’s my birthday,’ you said. ‘What are you planning for my birthday?’ you said. So, like, here’s what I planned, Wentz, deal with it.” Patrick finally, finally finishes lighting the candles and straightens away from the cake.

“You’re kind of a mean boyfriend,” Pete tells him.

Patrick grins at him and ducks forward to murmur, “I’ve got a cake in the shape of me waiting for us in our bedroom.”

“Shut up,” Pete says, “don’t tease me.”

Patrick leans back and winks. “Let’s sing you ‘Happy Birthday’ so you can make a wish.” And then Patrick—Patrick, who once upon a time Pete had to beg to sing him “Happy Birthday”—Patrick clears his throat and announces, “Okay, time to sing ‘Happy Birthday,’” and then gives their friends and family the first note, singing it to them earnestly. “This is our note,” he sings, “everyone stay on key.”

Pete doesn’t bother to bite down on his smile, as he watches Patrick conduct the singing of his “Happy Birthday” like it’s the New York Philharmonic.

Then he looks at his flickering candles and thinks that he doesn’t have a single fucking thing to wish for.

***

There isn’t a cake in the shape of Patrick in their bedroom but there’s a Patrick in the shape of Patrick in their bedroom, and Pete thinks that’s just as good.

“Okay,” Patrick pants, when Pete has him shoved back onto the bed and has crawled on top of him and is _metaphorically_ devouring him, “but if you wished for a cake in the shape of me, I swear I really can make that happen.”

“Patrick, focus,” Pete tells him, and bites his neck.

“Yeah, I’m…focusing,” Patrick gasps. “It’s just that I know you can’t tell me or it won’t come true but if you would drop a hint or something and then I would get it for you, that would be—”

“Patrick, there is no wish, _focus_ ,” says Pete, and drags a string of kisses down Patrick’s chest.

“Okay, but—oh, fuck, that’s…good, that’s good, _fuck_.”

The only reason Pete doesn’t say _I know_ is because his mouth is full but he sucks smugly, which is a thing he’s actually really good at.

Which is what Patrick says later. “You give smug blowjobs,” he manages, around the taste of him in Pete’s mouth in his mouth.

“Yeah, I do,” Pete agrees. “Lucky you.”

“It’s your birthday.” Patrick tugs him in by the collar of the shirt Pete’s still wearing and kisses him hard. “I swear I had a whole _thing_ planned here for you.”

“Patrick, what could you give me better than the chance to be smug around your dick?”

“I think you’re a weird person,” Patrick tells him breathlessly, and kisses him again.

Pete smiles into the kiss. “Anyway, you didn’t have a cake in here in the shape of you, so I had to improvise and put something else in my mouth.”

Patrick finally gets around to taking Pete’s shirt off of him. “Like, I genuinely can’t tell if this cake thing is an honest-to-god kink or a joke.”

“I mean, neither can I,” says Pete, and lets Patrick roll him over.

“Hey,” he says, and kisses Pete shallowly. “So.” Another brief swipe of his tongue. “Not joking. Give me a hint about your birthday wish so I can go out and get it for you.” Patrick leans down to find that spot at the base of Pete’s neck that makes his breath catch when he sucks just so. 

“Patrick, cutie-pie, don’t worry about it.” Pete tangles a hand into Patrick’s hair as Patrick’s hands skim down his chest toward his jeans. “There really wasn’t any wish.”

Patrick’s fingers undo the button of his jeans and then stop. Patrick lifts his head up and away from him. “What?”

Pete blinks his eyes open, dazed. “Huh?”

Patrick is staring at him. “What do you mean, there was no wish?”

“What the fuck,” Pete says quizzically. “There was no birthday wish. I didn’t make a wish. You were freaking out about the wish, so stop, there’s no wish, there _is_ , however, a penis that—”

“No. Wait. Hang on.” Patrick sits up on Pete’s legs and frowns at him.

“Seriously?” Pete is a little astonished. “Are you seriously going to have a fight with me before getting me off on my _birthday_?”

“We’re not having a fight,” Patrick denies. “We’re having a discussion.” Patrick finishes undoing Pete’s jeans with a clinical dexterity. “Look, see, still moving right along. You didn’t make a birthday wish?”

“I mean this in a really loving way,” Pete says gravely. “A really adoring way. But what the fuck is happening right now? You barely care about birthdays. Every year you roll your eyes when I want to make a big deal about birthdays. Have you ever even made a birthday wish in your _life_?”

“Of course I make birthday wishes,” Patrick protests. “Have you thought all this time I don’t make birthday wishes?”

“What did you wish for this year?” Pete asks, because apparently they really are going to have this conversation right now.

Patrick stills, looking down at him in alarm, and then says, “If I tell you, it doesn’t come true. Isn’t that the rule? Fuck, I don’t even believe in these fucking things, and now you’ve got me too superstitious to tell you.”

“You were just asking me to give you a hint about mine!” Pete points out.

Patrick squeezes his eyes shut, clearly frustrated, and then says fiercely, “I wished for you to stay healthy and happy. Okay? Don’t you fucking jinx that, do you hear me?”

Pete’s breath stutters. He says wonderingly, “Patrick.”

Patrick opens his eyes. “If you think I wouldn’t take any fucking opportunity to try to accomplish that for you, if you think I wouldn’t jump through every superstitious hoop on Earth for that, you’re out of your fucking mind.”

“Patrick,” Pete says again, and reaches to pull him in for a kiss.

Patrick kisses him with the same stubborn challenge that had been in his voice, as if daring Pete to make fun of his wish. Like Pete would ever make fun of _that_.

“Patrick,” Pete whispers, his hand on the back of Patrick’s neck, “I think I must not be very good to you if you think I’d ever laugh at you for trying to make me _happy_.”

“I just…felt silly,” Patrick confesses. “It’s true, I always make fun of you for the birthday stuff, I get why you might think it’s hilarious I’m taking these wishes seriously.”

“I don’t think it’s hilarious,” Pete denies. “I think it’s…super-sweet, honestly. No semi- about it.”

Patrick chuckles. “Okay, yes, shh, don’t ruin my reputation.”

Pete lets Patrick breathe against him for a moment, leaning onto him, then says, “Okay, but, you wished for something really sweet and selfless and you thought my wish was going to be, what, a car or something?”

“No,” Patrick answers. “I don’t know. Christ, I was really only fooling around. I didn’t expect you not to have a wish.” Patrick sits up again so they can see each other. “Why don’t you have a wish?”

“Patrick, what do I have left to wish for?” asks Pete.

Patrick blinks, startled. “What? Don’t say stuff like that. That sounds like… Don’t say stuff like that. We’ve got a lot of life ahead of us. We’ve got to fill it up.”

Pete looks up at Patrick in utter bewilderment, and then realizes what Patrick is thinking. “ _Oh_. Patrick. No. That’s not how I mean it at all.” Pete shakes his head. “Not even a little bit. I mean.” Pete struggles to sit up, Patrick rolling entirely off of him to give him room. “I mean that tonight you got me a cake in the shape of our dog, and then I watched you _conduct_ ‘Happy Birthday’ for me. Like, you were keeping a beat for everyone. To ‘Happy fucking Birthday,’ Trick. I watched that and I… That Twinkie birthday. You mentioned it tonight so I know you were thinking about it. I had to cajole you into singing for me that night, I had to fucking _beg_ , and tonight you conducted an orchestra for me. Like, Patrick, how fucking ungrateful would I have to be to ask for anything more than _this_? You are so much more than anyone else on the planet gets to have.”

Patrick looks at him for a long moment and then leans forward to kiss him ferociously, knocking his head back against the headboard but Patrick’s hand is cupped behind to catch it and soften the blow. He pulls back, breathing hard, and says, “It’s _your_ birthday, asshole, stop giving me fucking gifts,” and finally slides down to peel Pete’s jeans off of him.

Pete watches him, his strawberry-blonde head settling between Pete’s thighs, and the thing is that Pete’s seen this before, so many times that he finally stopped counting, stopped thinking it was going to end, stopped holding his breath, stopped _wishing_ , because he didn’t need to wish, he _had_.

“Trick,” he says suddenly, hoarsely, and Patrick looks up at him, and Pete reaches to trace the shell of his ear, the fall of his hair over his forehead, the curve of that beloved mouth. “I wished for you that night,” he says, and he doesn’t know why, just that it feels like he should say it, given Patrick’s confession. “The Twinkie night. Joe was holding that fucking lighter and you were singing to me and I couldn’t shape what I wanted the wish to be, I just thought, _Him. I wish for him_. I didn’t know what that might look like, just that I wanted the future to have you, some version of you in my life, whatever that was. I got… I got _this_. I don’t even know. I wished for you and look what I _got_.”

Patrick has eyes whose color changes in the light. Pete’s stopped trying to pin them down, lets them be whatever they feel like being at any given moment, and right now they are blue fading to green and they drown him. “I never could decide if that was just a line that night, or you really did want me enough to wish for me.”

“Patrick,” Pete says incredulously. “I was _transparent_ about wanting you.”

“You were transparent about wanting everybody,” Patrick says.

“That was only to cover up how transparent I was about you,” Pete informs him. “I was so fucking obvious with you, I had to be fucking obvious with _everyone_.”

“That was a stupid strategy,” Patrick remarks.

“Oh, yeah? You’re about to blow me, so I think it turned out okay.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Peter,” Patrick says, but he leans down to lick a stripe up Pete’s cock, so that’s okay. But then he stops to perch his chin on Pete’s hip, looking up at him thoughtfully.

Pete, feeling self-conscious, ruffles at Patrick’s hair and says, “So that’s it. You’re my wish. You’ve always been my wish. Don’t jinx it, okay?”

“I won’t,” Patrick says seriously. “I couldn’t possibly. It was a stupid fucking waste of a wish. You had me the whole time.”

“Well,” Pete replies, and thinks of a book in his hands, a book that still sits on their bookshelf, and Patrick never mentions it but Pete will sometimes draw his finger along its spine and think of pressing Patrick up against the car door and wishing, wishing, _wishing_. “Not a waste from where I’m sitting.”

Patrick’s lips quirk in amusement and he slants his eyes over toward Pete’s neglected dick. “Hey, Pete,” he says, lifting his head up to adjust his angle, “why don’t you wish for a really great blowjob for your birthday?”

“Because I think now I really do want a cake that looks like you,” says Pete.

“You can have both,” Patrick assures him.

“I’m trying to come up with some kind of candle and cock joke and I’m not getting anywhere,” says Pete.

“Good,” says Patrick, “let me interrupt that train of thought right there.”

“Fucking finally,” Pete says, “I should have just—gone the bad joke route—from—the beginning.”

Patrick pulls off to say, “I know you do that, you know,” and then ducks back down.

“You love it,” Pete manages, his hands fisting into the sheets.

“I love _you_ ,” Patrick says, putting one of Pete’s hands into his hair, and then swallows him down.

“Motherfucking wishes,” Pete whispers, arching his head back, tugging at Patrick’s hair, and squeezes his eyes shut, and sees shooting stars.

**Author's Note:**

> [Pete apparently really did have a birthday cake in the shape of Hemingway](https://people.com/celebrity/pete-wentz-adopts-a-baby-puppy/).


End file.
